Samsung jumps to third spot in foundry ranking

LONDON – Samsung doubled its foundry sales in 2012 and took third place, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and Globalfoundries Inc. in a ranking compiled by market analyst IC Insights.

TSMC remained the leading foundry with sales almost four times greater than those of second-ranked Globalfoundries. United Microelectronics Corp. – for many years the second ranked foundry – experienced a fall in sales in 2012 and slipped back to fourth place (see ranking table below).

Samsung's manufacture of application processors for Apple was key to its growth in 2012 although it is expected that Apple will start to move manufacturing to TSMC in 2013. Nonetheless IC Insights said it believes Samsung will challenge Globalfoundries for the number two spot in 2013.

Samsung's dedicated foundry IC capacity was 150,000 wafers per month in 4Q12 giving the company the potential to produce annual sales of about $5.4 billion, assuming an average revenue per wafers of $3,000, said IC Insights.

In 2012 Apple's share of Samsung's foundry output was 89 percent, the market watcher said. Samsung's challenge will be to bring on replacement customers as Apple diversifies its suppliers.

In total, the top 12 foundries were responsible for 90 percent of total foundry sales in 2012. This has increased from 81 percent in 2009, before Samsung began manufacturing processors for Apple. IC Insights consolidation to continue and the top 12 market share to continue to rise.

Samsung's dedicated foundry IC capacity was 150,000 wafers per month in 4Q12 giving the company the potential to produce annual sales of about $5.4 billion, assuming an average revenue per wafers of $3,000, said IC Insights http://tramonto-azsearchforhomes.com/

Its amazing to see how Samsung is capturing every market it enters. It not only did well in smartphone/tablet market but it also did very well in foundry sales. I wonder what is the secret behind this huge success ?

1) Replacing is initiated. Let's wait and see the result by end of this year.
2)It is tricky to be IDM and Foundry. How to let your competiors manufacture your products but without concerns? Long time ago, UMC was IDM and foundry supplier but eventually span off device segments to sustained foundry business.
3)Another example: Long time ago, a smartphone company launched an new display panel product which was manufactured by her competitor. The product was very successful then. For competition, supplier stopped delivering parts by tactics and successfully won the competition.
4)Learning from history usually gives insights.

Replacing 89% of Apple's biz will not be easy. Any data/info on what makes IC Insights' analysts believe that even with Apple moving to TSMC, Samsung will still be in a good position to challenge GF for the number 2 spotin 2013?

IC insight counted only the foundry business. Manufacturing their own designs is not counted here. Exynos business itself would be easily few billion dollars considering the sales of galaxy S3, note 2 and note 10.1.

The increase of overall sales in 2012, about $9B, has almost gone to top 3. Samsung have done a fantastic job in capturing the market. Given the overall volume of sales in other Samsung's business, how much are those contributing to that of the foundry business?

Apple sold roughly 130M iPhones and 60M iPads last year (2012). If we assume each costs $25, apple business itself would generates $4.5B revenue. (A5X and A6X chips would be definitely more expensive than $25 considering their huge die sizes).
Samsung sold more smartphones than Apple last year - not sure how many of them used Exynos chips though.